The Boys Season 4 dropped less than a week ago to mixed reviews from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes, and for good reason. Namely, the fans feel like the show has become more critical and mocking of far-right political ideologies, resulting in an abysmal The Boys Season 4 Rotten Tomatoes audience score of 49 percent.

Review-Bombed For Hot Takes

To be entirely honest, the series has always included plenty of social and political commentary and satire, often presented alongside extreme violence and immoral behavior by the Supes—in-universe superheroes who are as popular as celebrities, as influential as politicians, and often revered as gods. But The Boys Season 4 has taken things to a whole new level, mocking make-belief events that are inspired by real-world stuff, like QAnon and Pizzagate, and some fans aren’t thrilled with the fact, prompting many to review-bomb the series Rotten Tomatoes.

A Critical Hit While The Audience Splits

In fact, the audiences disproves of the new season so much that The Boys Season 4 currently has a 46 percent split between the audiences and critic ratings. Thus far, all previous seasons of The Boys have had pretty consistent critics and audience ratings, with numbers never falling below 85 percent and 75 percent, respectively. However, The Boys Season 4’s Rotten Tomatoes score currently rates the series at 95 percent critics score and only 49 percent audience score, which is the lowest the series has ever received in its five years on the air.

Showrunner Claps Back

The running theory thus far is that a significant portion of the audiences have realized The Boys Season 4 play is about them, especially now that that series’ political allegory is barely even an allegory at this point—which also really says a lot, but also explains the The Boys Season 4 Rotten Tomatoes score.

Adding insult to injury, showrunner Eric Kripke outright said that the new supe Firecracker was directly inspired by Marjorie Taylor Greene, a conservative representative. He also added that he does not care what the offended portion of the audience thinks:

“I clearly have a perspective, and I’m not shy about putting that perspective in the show. Anyone who wants to call the show “woke” or whatever, that’s OK. Go watch something else. But I’m certainly not going to pull any punches or apologize for what we’re doing,” said Kripke.

Takes Shots At Both Sides

However, the showrunner also added that The Boys also takes an occasional shot at the left and all of its “performative wokeness.” This is seen several times throughout the show; one of the most interesting pokes was associated with rainbow capitalism, or rainbow washing, which is a practice in which major corporations seemingly align themselves with and express support for the LGBTQ+ community to sell products. Of course, this runs the risk of angering the left, which would bring down the The Boys Season 4 Rotten Tomatoes score even lower.

All Publicity Is Good Publicity

Whether or not that happens remains to be seen. It’s important to note that there’s no such thing as bad publicity; The Boys Season 4 Rotten Tomatoes score only goes as far to show that the series only made one side of the political coin more furious than the other, but it still remains quite relevant in the entertainment space. That isn’t likely to change for at least a few years as the show transitions into Season 5 and concludes its narrative—which gives it plenty of time for its audience score to recuperate a bit.